


Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda

by Dien



Category: The Expendables (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-11
Updated: 2010-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-13 14:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien





	Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leobrat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leobrat/gifts).



“You might have to kill him, you know.”

 

Barney looked back over his shoulder, only to have Tool's nicotine-stained hand grip his head and turn it back around forward, a wordless admonishment to _sit still, I'm tattooing you, genius._

 

He scowled at the speedometer on the motorcycle, keeping his shoulders still so Tool could ink. True, he didn't want a jagged needle scar crossing one of his shoulderblades.

 

“I'm not doing that,” he said in a low rumble. “He's one of the team, Tool.”

 

The burn of the needle felt like a rebuke, and he ground his teeth together. Tool didn't say anything for another five minutes, and then he said, “Was, my man. Was.”

 

Barney pressed his lips together in a thin line, and his knuckles tightened on the handlebars of the bike. “Doesn't work that way. You're one of the team, you're a brother for life, even if you get yourself screwed up. I'm not icing Gunner. He's had my back more times than I can count.”

 

Tool shook his head, a motion Barney caught in the mirrors of the bike. “Man. Listen to you. Hey, my ass was hauled out of the fire by Gunner a few times myself, I get it. I'm not saying you oughtta enjoy it. But we ain't in the Marines anymore, buddy. We got no psych ward to send him to, and semper fi don't apply.”

 

“It always applies,” Barney grunted.

 

The needle bit deep; Barney grimaced. Tool carried on his flat, level voice. “This isn't the Marines,” he repeated. “He turned on his brothers first. And he knows all about everything, Barney. This place, all of it. You thought what he could do, he gets to turning on us?”

 

Barney Ross sighed, and let his head hang down between his powerful shoulders. “Gunner wouldn't do that.”

 

“Yeah? Tell Yin that. You really think he wouldn't turn, or you just don't want to own up to the chance he might?”

 

The leader of the Expendables said nothing, just closed his eyes and tried to lose himself in the burn of the needle, tried to let it carry away memories of the past. But memory was powerful, and the burn between his shoulderblades only brought things back.

 

_Iraq – 1990_

 

Gunfire shattered the night air overhead, blasted it with staccato bursts of light that made it seem like noon. Ross was crawling on his belly in the sand, blood running down a gash on his temple. All he had to do was make it up the hill, drop the grenade down on the entrenched Iraqi soldiers, and it'd be over.

 

Hell of a job, the sort of thing he wouldn't ask one of his men to do. Crawling out with no real cover to speak of, trusting only to the darkness of night and the strafing battle to distract the gunners from his slithering silhouette. No, he wouldn't ask anyone else to do what had to be done. He'd forbidden anyone else from the platoon from following.

 

Inch by inch on his belly, desert dust coating his nostrils and throat. He tried to hold back a cough but it came anyway. Not that it mattered in the screaming chatter of gunfire and distant explosions.

 

He didn't let himself think if he was being seen. He didn't let himself worry. He just kept moving.

 

And then he was nearing the top of the hill.... closer... and suddenly an Iraqi face was staring into his own, eyes white and wide. Goddamn, they had posted a rearguard!

 

He saw the blur of motion as the gun came up- he rolled to his side-- the bullet that would have buried itself between his shoulderblades skimmed along them instead, opening a thin line of fire right across his back. He didn't scream. Couldn't scream. If he swept out with his arm maybe he could catch the guy at his legs before he fired again-- he tried to move, knowing it wasn't quick enough, not nearly--

 

And then the ground behind him shook with a giant's charge and Gunner's fist caught the much smaller Iraqi clean in the temple, felled him to the sand like a tree.

 

Barney stared up at the bigger man, who stood grinning down at him with odd boyishness.

 

“Fuck it, I told you to stay--”

 

“Yeah, I decided to disobey and save your ass instead, Lieutenant.”

 

“You-- GET DOWN!” He hooked his arm around Gunner's legs and jerked, like he'd meant to do with the Iraqi. Too slow to stop the first bullet-- he saw it blow a chunk from Gunner's arm, spatter the hot night air with blood-- but Gunner crashed ungracefully to the sand beside him and the rest of the bullets merely sliced the air above them.

 

“Jesus,” Barney swore under his breath as the nest of enemy soldiers opened fire on them, gunfire singing in the air above their heads. No more time. In a second they'd both be perforated. He yanked the pin from the grenade with his teeth and _threw._

 

In, one-two-three--

 

The desert exploded, the night made noontime again. Sand and rock and human body parts flew all around, spattering the ground, landing on Barney, landing on Gunner. He was momentarily deafened by the blast, momentarily blinded too.

 

When it cleared the first thing he noticed was the gunfire had stopped. Got them all then. Then from down the hill:

 

“LT! You okay, sir?”

 

“Yeah,” he croaked back, and heard a third sound- Gunner laughing. He reached out and punched him as hard in the arm as he could. It was like smacking a brick wall.

 

“You _never_ break your cover and orders again, you hear me??”

 

Gunner just laughed, not even caring about the pain, his gunshot. “That was beautiful, sir. Jesus, but we work well together.”

 

And despite his anger, he couldn't help a grin. The big lug wasn't wrong about that.

 

“So we do, soldier. So we do.”

 

...the needle bit in again, like guilt, like recrimination, and in the present, Barney Ross winced. How many times had Gunner done that-- defied his orders, first when they'd been serving together and then in their company of mercenaries? Always with that boyish grin, that attitude like it was all a big damn fun game. It had been so hard to stay angry with the big Swede.

 

He knew, a little bit-- one night when Gunner had been drunk, the man had been morose, wanted to talk. Normally drunken Gunner wanted to fight, but one night...

 

In halting English mixed in with Swedish that Barney didn't speak, there had been obscure mentions to a past that sounded as bloody and unhappy as any of their lives. Something about a dead girlfriend, the Russian mob.

 

He hadn't probed or pressed for more. Men didn't do that. Wasn't their way. They'd all come from some sort of shit or another; they were all running from something or pretending the faces of the men they killed belonged to someone in particular. That was just how it was.

 

You didn't go around digging into people's lives, into their personal habits. They wanted to get skunk-drunk, that was their business, as long as they showed up sober for the job.

 

They wanted to get juiced and high... same thing. You didn't ask. You didn't ask if a guy was _okay,_ not unless you wanted a sock to the jaw. This wasn't Oprah for Chrissake.

 

You didn't ask.

 

Barney Ross closed his eyes, let the background whine of the needle and Johnny Cash on Tool's radio drive away the voice that was saying, quietly that maybe he should have.


End file.
